Yes, I Am Proud Of Having Started A Tradition

Journalists are grateful too

To truly become a beneficiary to future generations of journalists it is necessary to invent a new type of article. Something that then gets re-written periodically. So that the one and original piece then produces a flow of job and work opportunities down the generations.

Of course, if you’re really smart then you make sure that you’re the guy who gets to write all the updates - which makes me a benefactor to journalists but not a really smart journalist.

For there is this:

Public donations to pay off the national debt have hit their highest level in at least a decade amid growing concern about the UK’s soaring debt mountain.

Members of the public handed almost £700,000 over to the Government through six individual bequests and donations last year, according to Debt Management Office (DMO) figures obtained via a Freedom of Information request.

The amount for the 2023-24 financial year was the highest in at least a decade, with the biggest single payment to help pay off Britain’s £2.65 trillion debt pile coming from a £500,000 bequest, according to the DMO, which did not provide names of individual donors.

One way to think of this - an entirely correct way to think of it too - is that an entire 6 people last year thought that inheritance tax was too low. Which, out of the about 600k deaths (not looked it up but that’s right order of magnitude, it’s not 6 million and it’s not 60k) is not actually a lot. 0.001% in fact.

One of the grand insistences of economics is that watching what people do gives more information about their true beliefs than listening to what they say - revealed preferences, not expressed. So, by what people actually do we have 0.001% of the people leaving estates of any size whatever who think that the tax on estates is too small. This is not a large majority in favour of higher taxes upon estates being left.

But back to the far more important subject, me.

As far as the UK is concerned I did start this off. The reporting on how much people voluntarily leave to the government. Who pays extra that is - who makes a voluntary donation to government. Back in 2006 in fact, back in the depths of the Brown Terror:

LAST YEAR there were five people in Britain who thought that their taxes were too low. No, this isn’t the number of people who have called for higher taxes. Rather, it is those who were so convinced of the righteousness of state spending that they voluntarily sent extra money to the Treasury.

The Americans have been doing this since 1843. It’s always been possible to pay extra to HM Treasury - Stanley Baldwin actually handed over one fifth of his estate while he was still alive. Admittedly, he was Financial Secretary to the Treasury at the time and was asking for donations to aid in paying down war debt but still, props for money where mouth is.

Cheques, by the way, should be made out to “The Accountant, HM Treasury”, and sent to 1 Horse Guards Road, London SW1A 2HQ. A 2nd-class stamp is sufficient and you are encouraged to add a covering note so that your donation is spent in the way you like.

I wrote that piece for The Times simply because I thought it would be a cute thing to do - and I wanted the £200 that went with writing it. As ever with freelance journalism, my money is important.

I also know that that was the first piece that appeared in UK journalism on this point. For when I asked the Treasury they’d no idea at all how many had in fact paid extra. Took them months to find out too. The donations had happened before, but no one had been writing about it. At least, not since Baldwin’s generation.

Which does indeed mean I am a benefactor to my fellow journalists and Huzzah for that.

Today’s Telegraph, the FT in 2017. A proper search would find several pieces each year in fact. So, you know, I’m owed a pint.

The obvious gloriousness of the point has even led government to do something:

This page gives guidance to members of the public or private businesses who may wish to make a voluntary contribution to HM Government.

Not only did Treasury not know how many did so back in 2006 they also didn’t tell nor publicise how to do so. Now they do, which is good. And, once again Huzzah for Timmy!

Except, of course. There is greater visibility of this option now. Government will tell you how to do it. Articles appear in the press with regularity explaining how many have done so. With the obvious implication that you too can do so if you wish. And, as we can see from the numbers, no one does so wish.

We now have something much more than a - terribly beneficial - repeatable story for journalists. We’ve now got an even better example of expressed preferences. Many more people now know about being able to make extra tax payments. No more people do, of no greater amounts. Therefore the number of people who think that taxes are too low is that same pitifully small amount, single digits of people in a nation of 67 million.

Britain is not, by the standards of Britons, a low tax country. Good to know, eh?